I like to keep some slim books around to fill in the gaps between the more weighty tomes, Cats cradle – at 179 pages – is just such a book. I also find books with short chapters to be quick & easy to read from a structural point of view. Despite only having 179 pages, Cats Cradle also has a staggering 127 chapters, making each an average of 1.4 pages long.

This is a very strange little tale, which manly consists of our narrator chappy, John or Jonah, investigating into the background of Mr Felix Hoenikker, fictional co-creator of the Atom Bomb & inventor of the mysterious substance Ice Nine. Along the way he become involves in Felix's 3 strange off spring & the even stranger religion of Bokonon.

Apart from the ever present threat of Ice Nine being unleashed on the world at large there is very little SF in this book & it's mainly a character study of the main people involved in the plot. We're onto chapter 105 before Ice Nine really make an appearance at all & things then get very, very weird indeed. To elaborate would be to give to much away, if you fancy an odd little read, give this a whirl.